


more familiar roads

by piggy09



Series: boxes [5]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, this is so late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4034977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah put Helena in a cage, like a dog. But when there was something to fight she walked into the cage with a leash held out in her hands. <i>Helena, Helena, please be my knife. Be my gun. Be my stinger.</i> Maybe Helena is tired of being someone else’s stinger. Maybe Helena is not Sarah’s weapon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	more familiar roads

**Author's Note:**

> So this is SUPER DUPER delayed but it is my summary fic for both Episode 5 and Episode 6 of Season 3. I smushed 'em together. Sorry for the wait!

Helena wakes up in pain. _Much_ pain, pain radiating from every part of her body where they beat her. The dirt is hard underneath her body. Her feet are shackled together – but oh, what is one more cage? Maybe Helena _likes_ cages now. Maybe she should celebrate, that now she can barely even walk.

She’s distracted by the rattling; when she looks up, Pupok is sitting in front of her. Pupok never gets hurt. No matter how much Helena is hurt, Pupok is always fine. It is unfair, maybe, Helena thinks. But it is also a relief: at least someone is in this cage with her. There are few things worse than being alone with what you have done and what you have not done.

“Pupok,” she whispers, hoping stupidly for some comfort.

_You killed their lab rat_ is her only response, hissed and angry. _What did you expect, cheesecake?_

Helena wants to roll her eyes at Pupok’s riddle-games – rat, cheese – but more than that she is upset with the words _lab rat_. Parsons was not a rat. He was not a lambchop, either, but those words were a kindness Helena could give him. He was a _man_ , and now he is nothing.

“He was suffering,” she whispers.

_And now you are_.

Helena blows sand over Pupok, but the thought has crept into her head like a smaller, sneakier scorpion: was it really worth it? Was it worth it, keeping herself locked up to let someone else go free?

It’s a bad thought. It’s a bad thought, because that would make that death a bad thing and it cannot be that. It has to be freedom, or what was the point of it? There was no point, and Helena is nothing more than what she has been: a sinner, a murderer, someone who deserves—

Metal.

In front of her: a little piece of metal. She sits up to look at it. It is very, very sharp.

Before she can stop herself she is pulling down the straps of her shirt, almost eager with the thought of it. Helena used to be very bad; Helena used to do many bad things. She was a sinner. But she could always clean herself again. She could always be alright – blood washing away blood, amen.

_Oh, Helena,_ Pupok says. _Guilty pleasures won’t help you escape_. But the scorpion does not understand: this is not about guilt, or pleasure, or escape. This is about penance. This is about making herself stronger, better, even closer to an angel.

(She thought, for a while, that an angel was something she could choose not to be. But the longer she spends here the more she forgets: who was she, in that time when she thought she was free? Is she certain she is not herself from Before Sarah, that self who was something like holy? The cage bars around her are like solid weights on the back of her mind. It is so easy to forget that there was ever anything outside of them.

_Guilty pleasure_. Maybe. Maybe. But that is the only sort of pleasure Helena can get, here in this box.)

She presses the blade into the skin of her back and lets her eyes flutter shut. The pain hits her like a bright light and she is gasping, eyes going wide – it is so bright and sharp and sweet that she can forget everything. She can forgot Sarah, forget the hope of Sarah – which she is losing every day, even as she spits at all these Mark-faced men that she believes. Believing is so tiring. Helena could believe in God, when someone told her to, when God was nothing but a vague idea and a list of words you can whisper to yourself over and over in the dark. She can believe in Sarah now – maybe, maybe, but doubt is such a heavy weight on her tongue. Like her unbrushed teeth, like the way bread tastes with no butter. She is so very tired, and underneath the scraps of hope she is clutching in her hands is the thought: what reason does Sarah have, to not sell Helena out? Sarah has left Helena behind before. Sarah has left Helena behind to save the other women she calls sisters. Sarah has left Helena behind because she did not want to come and get her. So easy, when Helena finds Sarah again, to say: well, no, let her go. Keep me and my _family_ safe.

Helena presses the blade in harder. She does not want to think about Sarah, and: the pain can help her. She can forget Sarah. She can forget Pupok’s little whispers. She can forget the sound Parsons made when he died. She can forget her baby, who is now sucking the pain out of Helena’s blood like it may one day suck milk from her breast – except she does not have to think about that. Any of that. All she is, now, is skin with pain shining through. Bright as anything.

Helena lets herself bleed.

Helena lets herself forget.

* * *

She is pulled out of her dreaming by her own voice screaming – _hello, hello, anybody, anybody._ But that is such a strange thing, because Helena stopped screaming a long time ago. Besides, there is nobody to call. So she slides the blade into her shoe and looks through the grating. On the other side: Helena’s feet, bare, as if Helena is watching herself attempt escape. 

Helena’s mouth opens, sharp, and a hot breath escapes her. Those are not Helena’s feet.

“Not so smart after all,” Helena says, sad like mourning. Just like that: the last scraps of belief slip between her fingers, soft and easy. All that is left is that sour taste in Helena’s mouth, and the beautiful hot sting of the feather on her back.

“Helena?” comes the frantic answer from the other side of the wall – frantic! Frantic, like Sarah did not put Helena here! Helena believed in Sarah! She told all of the men who said otherwise that her sister would not do that, her sister would not put her here; she thought of Sarah out there somewhere, safe with her family, not knowing where Helena was but caring enough about Helena to keep her safe. But: here is Sarah, also in a cage. She would not be here if she had not _known_. She would be out there, somewhere, out there in the world, safe and working to bring Helena home. _Not here_. It is her _fault_.

Sarah is yelling stupid things, _Helena, hey, hey_ , but Helena moves away from the window. She does not want to see Sarah’s face. Sarah lies to her all the time, over and over, with tears in her eyes. Always Helena believes her.

Believed. Always Helena _believed_ her.

“What – what have they done to you, are you okay,” Sarah whispers and Helena feels tears come to her eyes. Always, always, something has to have _happened_. What happened to you. What did they do to you. What have they done to you. What happened to you. This is just the same cage, and Helena just keeps walking into it over and over, always surprised when the door slams shut.

“I am most wonderful,” Helena says, like a liar. The pain on her back is like a star, and so Helena watches it instead of doing something stupid. Like crying. Or saying _I love you_. That would be very stupid.

“Hey, look at me, what have they done to you,” Sarah says again.

“You put me here.”

The words come out of her mouth easily, bitter and full of grief. Her belief flips. How could she ever have believed that Sarah was coming to save her? It is so easy to realize, now, that Sarah sold Helena to save herself. So easy to forget she ever felt otherwise. So easy to let herself sink into the pain on her back and remember what it was like to be Helena-alone, Helena who trusted no one except a scorpion who was only sometimes there and that the man on the boat would always raise his fist again.

But Sarah doesn’t know – Sarah thinks she is still the Helena who would follow her, who would rescue her over and over even though Sarah never helped Helena back. Sarah is whispering words to her from the other side of the grating and Helena is sick of it, sudden like violence. She slams her hand into the grating. This is like violence too.

“You did this to me!” she roars, and believes it. “I know you made deal with their mother. Me for you.”

Sarah breathes out the word _shite_ so low Helena almost can’t hear it – and it isn’t until Helena _does_ hear it that she realizes a part of her was waiting for Sarah to deny it.

“Yes, much shit,” she spits out. A shit sister. Full to the brim with stink and lies.

“Hey,” Sarah says, and again: “Hey. That’s not what happened.” Then she keeps talking, but Helena is no longer listening: Pupok has come back, like the scorpion knew Helena needed someone to trust.

_Give. Her. Nothing_ , Pupok hisses. It is easy to trust Pupok. Pupok leaves, but Pupok always comes back. Pupok has never needed salvation. Pupok has never looked at Helena and said, _you’re my sister, please, you saved my life, please, sister, please_.

“Don’t worry, Pupok, I will sew my mouth shut,” Helena says, grinning. The joke is this: she and Pupok were there, when she was Helena scared and alone in the dark. Pupok told her many stories. Pupok told her to be strong, and so it was. Amen. She can trust Pupok. Pupok has been there for her before.

“What?” says Sarah, desperately.

Sarah was not there.

“Helena, please,” she continues, “look at me.”

Helena does not. She stays silent. Eventually Sarah goes silent too. So.

Helena stands up from in front of the grating, trails her fingers along the wall. She manages to find the piece of chalk she had used, before, to draw her and Sarah on the door – back when she believed. She was younger, then, she was a fool. She crosses Sarah out, stroke by stroke; on the other side of the wall she can still hear Sarah breathing, so she matches the chalk to those breaths. Something pulls in her chest like ocean waves to let her meet those breaths. She doesn’t. She won’t. She can’t.

After a while Sarah is gone and Sarah is breathing quiet enough that she is almost gone. Helena shuffles back to the bed, lies down. She finds the piece of metal again. A voice in the back of her head whispers: _fly, fly, fly_. She could, right now. Carve more feathers into her skin and be free of this. But there are other ways to be free. So instead she curls onto her back, picks at the lock on her foot. Like this, see?

(She imagines someday her child, her little baby, sitting very still while Helena holds out a hairpin, says _like this_. She imagines a world where her child will never have to learn to pick locks. She imagines a world where there are no locks, where there are no cages.

Like this, see?)

On the other side of the wall Sarah talks and talks, talks herself hoarse. Helena doesn’t pay much attention until the break of Sarah’s voice on the word _yes_.

“Yes,” she says again. “There was a deal made for you. But I _didn’t make it_. Mrs. S did. She traded you to Castor to get me and Kira out of DYAD.”

“She made a bad choice,” Sarah says, and her voice breaks again. _Please sister please sister please_.

_Sarah’s lying_ , Pupok sighs. _She’s_ poison _. She’s gonna melt you like butter_.

“Shut up about the butter,” Helena sighs back. It was Pupok’s plan – and nobody loves Pupok’s plans more than Pupok. It has just been butter butter butter, all the time, ever since Helena found the hole in the wall. Ever since she started hoarding the butter, piece by little piece. Enough to make Helena _slip_ , out through the bars and away.

It is a shame that nobody listens to Pupok’s jokes except Helena. Helena gets very, very tired of Pupok’s jokes.

Sarah’s yelling in confusion on the other side of the grate; Helena would explain the joke, but that would be very very stupid of her to do. So she says nothing.

“Look,” Sarah says. “Mrs. S – she made that decision to protect her granddaughter. Think of what you would to do protect that baby in your belly.”

“Keep it far away from you,” Helena replies. With Pupok’s purring underneath her voice she can be certain of it, that this would be the right thing. _Think of what you would do to protect that baby in your belly_. So Helena thinks about it. She thinks, and Sarah talks, says: _I had to send Kira away_ again, _because these Castor assholes—_

Helena nuzzles the curve of Pupok’s stinger, so unlike the curves of Helena’s thumbs. Her own stingers. Helena Helena Helena, made of stingers. From the other side of the wall, Sarah says: _I wanted to look for you so I could make you fight them._

Well, no. That is not what Sarah says. Sarah says, _I knew I had to come find you because we can’t fight them alone_. But Helena can smell the truth under those words, sour as anything. Sarah put Helena in a cage, like a dog. But when there was something to fight she walked into the cage with a leash held out in her hands. _Helena, Helena, please be my knife. Be my gun. Be my stinger_. Maybe Helena is tired of being someone else’s stinger. Maybe Helena is not Sarah’s weapon.

“You know, I should have just left you in here to bloody rot,” Sarah spits, like she can hear what Helena is thinking and does not like it very much. Helena watches Pupok not say anything – so she is supposed to fight for herself then. Fine, fine, she can be her own stinger.

“In convent,” she says lazily, “I lived for four months in a broom closet. I do not rot.”

Pupok makes irritated sounds as Helena wobbles the stinger back and forth and back and forth. So it is almost like the two of them are talking, remembering what it is like to be closed in small spaces with no hope of escape. Sarah has been in this cage for such a short time, and she is already falling apart. Helena is smug at her own survival. Helena has always been able to survive. How could she forget?

The sound of a key in the door jolts her out of it, and routine settles under Helena’s skin like pieces of machinery ticking. Sarah has been here for a short time and she is afraid; Helena has been here for a long time and she _understands_. She has the beginnings of a plan hidden in the curves of her mind and in the loose brick behind the wall. She doesn’t need Sarah to save her. She never needed Sarah to save her, she didn’t, she _didn’t_.

She counts down as she stands up, just to prove it. See, see, I know the workings of this place. I am smart and you are not so smart. After all.

The door opens and a Mark-face marches in, followed by the-man-with-the-food. Helena eyes the golden squares of butter on the tray. Good.

She can hear Sarah spitting at them, but she’s distracted by the tray of food sliding through the door. She doesn’t need to listen to Sarah spit poison, poison, poison. She takes the tray to her bed and sits down. Is it bad, to say that Helena is grateful for this food? It’s only that so many of her cages have lacked it. To say that this cage is better than others does not mean she likes cages, not really. It’s just – she gets so hungry. So. She starts on the rice, shovels it into her mouth and listens to Sarah’s anger on the other side of the wall.

“Helena?” Sarah yells, desperately, and Helena smirks to herself. Helena can’t come-to-the-phone right now. Leave a message. Beep.

“Hey, Helena?” Sarah yells again. Beep beep beep. “Helena, you know they’re our brothers, right? They tell you that?”

Helena stops eating her rice.

The Mark-face boys are her brothers. Family.

(When she closes her eyes she can see Parsons looking at her, all afraid. Hear the beep-whine of the machines. Family family family family family family family family—)

(— _no_ family too who am I—)

(—watch Katja mouthing it through the window of the car, pull the trigger, _bang_ and Katja dies with red blood staining her red hair, _no_ family too _no_ family too no—)

(—family. Helena killed another member of her family. Helena was sent to this cage by her family. Helena is being held here by her family. Helena is being betrayed by her family. No family too. No family too. Just _one_.)

She swallows a spoonful, drops the spoon on her tray. Sits there, for a moment, and mourns. Sarah is _lying_ , she tells herself, but it doesn’t make sense. Why would Sarah lie about this? What does make sense: Sarah is doing what she does, when she needs Helena to need her. She is leaving a trail of truth like breadcrumbs that Helena will follow follow follow. Helena is so hungry that she will even eat _crumbs_. Helena is so hungry that she will swallow words like _you know that connection you feel, I feel it too_ or _you’re my sister_ or _please_. But she won’t. Not this time. She can’t. It doesn’t matter if she has brothers here. She has never wanted brothers. She has never _needed_ brothers. She can still kill them, if the time comes.

She already has.

Helena puts the tray to the side. She isn’t hungry anymore. Instead she picks up a square of butter, turns it over and over in her fingers. Puts that to the side so she can stand up and look through the bars of her cage. Helena tells herself that she isn’t waiting for Sarah to come back, or waiting for a Mark-face to walk by so she can – anyways, she is not doing that. She is only looking. She grabs the bars in her hands, twists.

One of them shifts, slightly. Helena twists it, watches it go around and around in circles. Her heart is drumming an urgent beat against the bones in her chest. _Hurry hurry hurry hurry_. She pulls herself over and around her bed, to the wall in the back of the room that is her hiding place. Checks: no one is coming. She starts pulling out the stone. She puts the butter in the wall and counts up all the golden squares that could make a road to some sort of escape. Yellow butter bricks, like a story.

With her butter counted, Helena puts the stone back and throws herself onto her bed. Thinks, her fingers stroking up and down her stomach. There is butter. There is enough butter. She has added the squares of butter up over and over, and there are enough to get Helena out.

Only Helena, though. Only Helena and her child.

Not that she was going to get Sarah out anyways. The plan wouldn’t work for Sarah. Besides, Sarah put her here. It is Sarah’s fault. So. She wouldn’t.

The pieces are putting themselves together in her mind like handcuffs clicking, like bricks coming together to make a wall for Helena to climb. The butter in the wall. The metal hidden in Helena’s shoe. The loose metal bar. Click, click, click. It is enough to make the idea of _escape_ into something real, something Helena could hold in her hands. Her plan is full of holes, but it is starting to be one: a _plan_.

Somewhere, a door slams. Three two one. Sarah is back. With her comes an army of little soldiers, climbing through Helena’s stomach into her chest. Guilt and anger and love and guilt. Helena would fly away from them, but she can’t – not with Sarah there. Maybe there are other ways to get them out.

She makes her way across her cell (she barely can, with the way they have chained her feet together) to the little window.

“The mother wants to make medicine for the Mark-faced boys,” she says, innocent. Look. Look, Sarah. You tell me things! I can tell you things too. I am just as smart as you – maybe smarter. You are not so smart, after all.

“Yeah, thank you for the warning,” Sarah says. Looks at her arm.

“They took like a gallon of blood,” she mutters. Helena fidgets, a little; nothing she says means anything to Sarah. She can’t speak to Sarah the way Sarah speaks to her. She can’t do it.

“You say they are our brothers?” she says, watching the way Sarah looks up. The words are heavy and sour on her tongue, but she says them anyways:

“I do not believe.”

“No?” Sarah says, and Helena grunts _no_. _Nn-nn._

“Well, I don’t care what you believe,” Sarah says. “You’re institutionalized.”

“What does this word mean?” Helena asks. In-sti-tu-tion-a-lized. Like Cold River Institute. But that could mean many things.

_I don’t care what you believe. Like the men at Cold River, you don’t believe in God._

_I don’t care what you believe. Like the Cold River Institute, I will never reach you._

_I don’t care what you believe. I_ never _care what you believe; I only leave you._

“It means that…you love it here,” Sarah says.

This is worse.

“Don’t worry,” she continues, “I’m sure they’ll make a nice little cage for your baby too.”

This is worse. This is _worse worse worse worse worse_. Helena wants to scream, wants to tear out the grating in the wall with her fingers and leap at Sarah, put out Sarah’s eyes with her thumbs. _She_ had thought _maybe Helena likes cages now_ , but when Sarah says it all Helena can think is _wrong wrong wrong_ over and over again. She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t want her _baby_ to be here. She would never. She would never! The fact that Sarah would sit there and say that, as if Helena was the worst sort of mother—

No. No, Helena is going to get out. She is going to stitch up the holes in her plan, and—

Wait. Wait. Helena thinks about the butter, thinks about the bar, thinks about Sarah in the room next to her whose desperation Helena can smell through the wall.

“To a rat, a small hole is like a door,” she says. There are many, many holes in her dream of escape. But with _Sarah_ there…maybe. Maybe.

“Have you figured a way out of here?” Sarah asks.

Something chuckles in the back of Helena’s brain, low and rattling. Sarah needs Helena to be her key, gnawed out of bones. But Helena is a key to get Helena out. Helena is not Sarah’s key. Helena is not Sarah’s weapon.

“Eat your food, _sestra_ ,” she replies.

This is not an answer.

* * *

Sarah paces around and around, and Helena watches her through the window for a little while before rolling onto her back. She is thinking. Click click click, all the pieces sliding together. When she closes her eyes she can hear the rumbling of trucks, the footsteps of men above their heads. She can hear the gurgling of her stomach; she traces a hand over it, thoughtfully. In the other cell Sarah climbs all over. Like she is climbing the walls. Is that the saying? Helena doesn’t know.

Before she can try to remember – English is _difficult_ – she’s interrupted by a pounding at the grate between them. Bang.

“Okay,” Sarah says. “Helena. How many men live on this base?”

“Approximately eleven million,” Helena says back, lazy like she has all the time in the world. She watches anger make its way across Sarah’s face. Huh.

“I know you,” Sarah says—

(she doesn’t)

(she doesn’t)

(she _doesn’t_ )

(That is a stupid lie, that is stupid. Sarah knows all of Helena’s strings, all of the places to pull. She does not know about the three days Helena spent in a cage with no food, licking water off the walls. She does not know the way Faith smiled at Helena or the way Helena smiled back. She does not know about the feather on Helena’s back that is bleeding and bleeding and—)

—“I know you’ve counted them.”

_Well_. This is not _not_ true. All plans require knowledge. The amount of soldiers on this base is knowledge. Conclusion—

A door slams. This is knowledge too. Helena counts down the seconds and: there. In comes a soldier boy. Right on schedule, all of these men with their wind-up hearts ticking away. They have schedules for skulls and timecards for throats. Tick tick tick tick tick.

A change in routine: the man who enters through the door does not have Mark’s face at all. It’s _Paul_ , following Sarah straight into the cell. Helena could tell him that this sort of thing never works; following Sarah like a dog only ends with you shot, only ends with you bleeding and waiting for someone who will never come. But why tell him? He is having a nice time yelling at Sarah, trying to make her believe. Helena listens to his voice tremble. Poor Paul. It’s almost like putting someone in a cage does not make them like you more. Hm.

She makes kissing sounds at him through the window, _mwah mwah_. Says: “Hello, dirty Paul.” The two of them eye each other through the bars of the cage. She wonders if he remembers, what it was like when he was Rachel’s dog. Now he is trying to be Sarah’s again, which is funny – but annoying. She doesn’t have time for him to dance around with a collar in his hands, not if she can escape.

But oh _no_ , she has made Sarah angry.

“Hey,” she spits. “You know what? This is the guy that sold you out to S. You don’t believe me? You can piss off too.”

That makes Helena’s mood go sour in her mouth. The words are angry enough to be the truth. So: did Sarah not put her here? Was this, maybe, not Sarah’s fault?

“Is this true, Paul,” she breathes. He says many words, but what they mean is: _yes_. So. Paul and Mis-sus S put Helena here, threw her in a cell. It wasn’t Sarah at all. It wasn’t Sarah. Sarah didn’t put Helena here, and Sarah wants to work together to get the two of them out.

What if she cares—

Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter! There is nothing Helena can do for Sarah anyways. It’s so easy to not believe in her, to block out the sound of Paul and Sarah bickering in the cell next to Helena’s. She stares at a part of the wall and reminds herself, over and over, that Sarah leaves her. Sarah always leaves her. Her plan only works for Helena-and-her-baby. The Sarah on Helena’s wall is crossed _out_. Just one. No family too. Just one.

Paul says _sisters, protect, sisters_ , and Helena does not listen. She doesn’t! She doesn’t listen at all, doesn’t listen to Paul lash out at her through Sarah, doesn’t listen to the way Sarah jumps right over it like it doesn’t matter.

(How many people has _she_ killed?)

(How many people has _she_ killed?)

(She says _please_ before Helena kills her. There are tears in her eyes – there are tears in _its_ eyes, and it says _please_ like its words will touch Helena’s pure heart.

The words mean nothing. Helena is floating high above on the sharp sting of pain in her back and the righteousness of removing sin from God’s earth.

The abomination dies with the word _please_ still on its lips.)

(Its eyes are glassy. Helena looks at them and frowns, because her eyes don’t look like that. She thought they were supposed to be perfect copies of her, but here is this thing lying in a pool of its own blood and not looking like Helena at all.

Oh well.)

( _Snap_ goes the neck and it crumples to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

And on the third day, it will not rise again.)

(How many people has _she_ killed?)

(Henrik and Amelia and Parsons and that man whose name Helena did not even _know_ , bodies after bodies, mothers and fathers and brothers and no family too no family too no family too no family too _no_ family too—)

Helena clenches her hands into fists, her nails biting into her palms like hungry teeth. She is losing herself in guilt and hurt and guilt and she doesn’t have time. She can weep later. Once she is free of this box, and the next box, and the next. When she is out of boxes she can weep. But it’s heavy in her, so heavy, and outside the cell Paul is talking about the soldiers like they are brave men instead of frightened little boys who Helena sees every time she tries to dream.

(And maybe – and _maybe_ she would like to say to Sarah: see, see, you believed in me for a reason. You defended me to Paul for a reason. I helped our brothers the only way I knew how, and I am not a bad person anymore. I am trying.

Maybe. _Maybe_.)

“Opening up their heads?” she asks through the bars. “I think Parsons would disagree.”

“Second Lieutenant Parsons sacrificed what little life he had left for his brothers.”

“He begged me to end it,” Helena says, softer than those words should be. They should be a battle cry, they should be a knife to stab into Paul over and over again. Instead they are soft, like a scalpel. She is so sorry for Parsons. He is dead. Before that he was alive. Helena does not know which one was worse.

“You murdered him,” Paul says, “and you destroyed months of data that could have helped them.”

No. No no no no _no no no no_ no. No! It was mercy, it was a gift, it was the only sort of peace Helena could give Parsons and Paul’s lies are worming their way into her ears like hungry mouths. Sadness eats at her from one end and guilt eats at her from the other. How does she get rid of it? She watches Paul watching her and tells herself, fiercely, to make a game of it. He wants to make a monster of her? He wants to make a killer of her? _Fine_ , dirty Paul. Helena will be anything you want.

She reaches her arms through the bars. (One wobbles.) (The bar.) (Not her arm.) (Her arm doesn’t shake at all. It doesn’t.)

“Maybe you’re next, Paul,” she says with a leer, manic and fake on her face. She breaks his neck – snap! – because if her hands were still for too long they would shake, or try to hurt her. It’s just a game. It’s just a silly game that she is playing; she is playing at being a bad person. That means that when she isn’t playing she _isn’t_ a bad person. She isn’t.

In the cage next to her Sarah roars, like an animal with teeth kept in a cage. The way Helena wants to roar and scream and roar, exactly the way she isn’t. She lets her body dangle through the bars and watches Paul run away. She’ll pull her arms back in soon. She’ll go back to work on escape soon.

She just – she just wants to wait until her arms feel like hers again. They will. They will feel like hers, and then she will bring them back into her cage. All she has to do is wait.

* * *

She pulls her arms back into the cage, eventually, and then it is just a matter of waiting some more. Waiting and waiting. She paces around the cell for a while – just because she can – and then crouches down on the ground and does push-ups. It hurts, in her arms and legs and the skin of her back where blood is drying. She keeps going anyways. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine.

“Come on, Helena,” says Sarah’s voice, burrowing through the bars. “I know you’re plannin’ some kind of escape.”

Sarah’s voice is like an insect buzzing away in Helena’s ear. Helena’s sister is bad at being patient! Helena learned patience behind a sniper rifle, and Sarah climbs the walls instead of sitting still. Helena is tired of trying to teach her, when the only payment she receives is Sarah changing her mind and deciding: no, no, she does not need Helena after all.

“I have no plan,” she spits back. “I am _institutionalized_.”

Sarah sighs, starts trying to make a plan on her own. Helena keeps at her push-ups (forty-two, forty-three), lets Sarah’s plan crawl into one of her ears and out of her other. It is useless. Sarah is useless, if she tries to make her own plan. Sarah is no good to Helena like _that_.

“Come on, _talk_ to me,” Sarah says. “I can help.”

Wrong!

“You want to be my sandwich?” Helena asks, heaving herself out of her push-up.

“What?”

“In Siberia,” Helena explains, “when planning escape, you take weak person with you. They are called _sandwich_ because you eat them.”

She laughs and laughs. It is a little bit like playing monster for Paul; underneath it, she is still very tired. Underneath her joke about eating Sarah is the cold and hungry truth that Helena _does_ have a plan, and at the end of it Sarah will stay behind. It is a truth she does not want to think about right now. She swallows it.

“You wanna know why I left Kira with Mrs. S?” Sarah asks, soft. Helena stops laughing. She sits herself on the other side of the wall, imagines Sarah’s voice seeping out of her. Now it is soft, like smoke. The remains of fires that eat fathers but leave mothers and children running, running.

And Sarah tells a story about Sarah running and running. Leaving her child behind, in a way Helena would never.

“One day,” Sarah says, “Mrs. S wouldn’t let me see her.”

“Why she does this?” Helena breathes. Why would you keep a mother away from her daughter? Why would you do that? Oh, Sarah says why: Sarah says she was a bad mother, she didn’t deserve it. Says: _she was right to do that_. But that is not true or fair. It is not right. It is _not_ right, no matter what Sarah says. You do not take a child from her mother. If you take a child from her mother she grows up angry and alone, making up friends to talk to her in the dark. If you take a child from her mother it ends with a knife.

(How many people has _she_ —)

Helena shakes herself out of that, pulls the piece of metal out of her shoe to give her something to concentrate on. Sarah keeps talking, filling the air with smoke, and Helena picks apart her words like finding the bone that will set her free. Well, there are two bones. The first is the story that she thinks Sarah is trying to tell: if you make stupid decisions, if you turn your back on your family and run, you will regret it. Please don’t leave me. I have left before and now I regret it, Helena, Helena, you have missed so much of my life already, do not miss this.

The second is the story that is settling in Helena’s bones: do not leave your child behind. Do what you have to, but do not leave your child behind.

She stills at the picking of the lock, stares at the blank wall. She knew, this whole time, that she had to leave Sarah behind. She knew that there was not enough holes in the world for both of them to fit through. She _knew_. She did. But this makes it real. This is the story that Sarah tells.

Sarah has left Helena before, over and over, and this is fine. But leaving _Kira_ , that is not something Sarah can forget or forgive.

So it is an easy choice. Child over sister, every time. Every time.

“Okay, Sarah,” Helena says, soft. “Okay.”

She leans forward against the grate, tells herself that there are no tears in her eyes and says “But you have to help me.”

Sarah will, she knows. Sarah will help Helena because she thinks Helena has said _Okay, Sarah, I will not hold this grudge_. But what Helena has said is this: _Okay, Sarah. When the time comes, I will leave you behind_.

* * *

She tells Sarah the plan. Everything she has managed to hold in her hands: the butter, the bar, the camera, the key. Sarah has to play her part, but if she does…if she does, it will be enough. Helena concentrates on that instead of the moment that is coming, the moment where she walks away and leaves Sarah behind. It’s the way she’s always worked: you put yourself deep inside your own plan, and do not think of the end result until it is bleeding out right in front of you. Forget, until it is necessary to stop forgetting.

She holds the steps in her mind all day – when they bring Helena and her sister meals on those bright red trays, when she rolls the butter in her hands before hiding it in the wall. Sarah barely eat hers, Helena watches. Fine. She can go hungry, if she does what she has to do. _Fine_. She can go hungry. Helena will eat, and Helena will be full and satisfied and ready to do her own part.

From there, it is waiting. Helena licks the rice from the corners of her mouth and leans through the window, listens to the sound of the camp. She can hear the footsteps of Mark-faces, but she can’t tell which one is which; they all sound the same. If scar-face Mark-boy comes through the door, there may be trouble. But she does not think he will. It will probably be the one with the fake leg. The second-ugliest Mark.

“Helena, what’s happening?”

That would be Helena’s sister, still too impatient.

“Any moment now,” Helena replies, soft. Patience, Sarah. _Patience_. Helena is patient, and it is rewarded: with a clatter, the door outside opens. She begins the countdown. There is a part of her that thrills at the sound of Sarah counting along with her, their voices twining together: _five. four. three. two. one._

The door opens. The plan swings into motion. Helena crouches by the window to watch and laughs at it, how well Sarah’s anger can be chewed into a key. She watches them all fight in the other cell, watches Sarah claw and scream.

Watches Sarah fall, all the way to the ground. Heavy.

For a second, she regrets it. For a second, her whole body screams _there has to be another way_.

But it’s just for a second. She watches Sarah, fiercely, because it is all she can do; it is all she can give Sarah, the weight of her gaze. _I know. I see you._ And a lie: _it will be alright_.

She watches and watches until they pull Sarah away, and Helena is left – again – alone. All she can do is wait. All she can do is hope that somewhere, Sarah is carrying out her plan – swallowing things and spitting them out, the two of them using their teeth and tongues to make an escape. Somewhere. Hopefully. Helena sits against the wall and rubs her hand over her belly, dreams of praying. But: she doesn’t do that anymore. She has nothing left to believe in; only this, step by step until the plan is done.

* * *

Eventually, Sarah comes back.

…

Thinking that feels good, so Helena lets herself think it one more time:

Sarah comes back.

She makes her clumsy way in through the door and Helena watches through the grate, waits for a sign that it has worked: that Sarah has it, the key she needs to pick the lock. The way out, the way out, the way out. She stays by the grate and says nothing, stays patient. Breathes: in. out. in. out.

On the other side of the wall: Sarah crouches down, taps on the grate with her knuckles as if Helena is not _right there_.

“Hey,” she whispers. “Hey, Helena. It worked.”

She holds up what she stole. Something warm bursts in Helena’s chest; she can’t help herself. The joy of a plan carried out. The hope of escape. The joy, the joy of working with Sarah, of Sarah willingly being Helena’s weapon. She wants this. It is the guiltiest of pleasures.

“Sarah, I think you are institutionalized too,” she whispers back, a smile twitching up the corners of her mouth.

“Sorry I ever said that,” Sarah mutters. She’s busy tying the tool she grabbed to the cord of her pants, and so she doesn’t see the smile drop off of Helena’s face. Sarah is _sorry_. (Doesn’t matter.) (Doesn’t matter.)

“Okay,” Sarah hisses. “Ready?” Helena nods, fast. Yes, she is ready. Her skin aches with it.

They go to work.

Sarah is _awful_ at this.

They are swinging the cord for what feels like forever, back and forth across the space between them. Helena grabs and grabs but can’t quite get it; the metal gleams mockingly as it flies towards and away from her, towards and away.

Stop. Hide. Swing, swing, swing.

_Grab_.

Sarah croons encouragement through the bars – Helena hears _good girl_ and immediately shoves that to the back of her head. No time for that. No time at all, maybe _never_ any time. She drops to the floor, bends the metal into shape, and gets to work. The lock snaps easily, and she is: free. But no time to think about that. She moves to the brick in the wall, pulls out the golden treasure she’s stored there. Like a monster from a story. Only she isn’t a monster. She isn’t. Not at all.

She shakes herself out of that like shaking herself out of her clothes, the way they grow in a pile at the foot of her bed. She starts smearing the butter all over herself. (After all this time, a little voice in the back of her head is still hissing _eat it eat it don’t waste food_. But what a stupid thing that would be, to stop and fill her belly. Helena is not stupid. She is not a monster, she is not a terrible person, she is not stupid.)

“Okay,” she says. “I’m ready.”

“You ready?” You ready? Okay,” Sarah says back; Helena can feel her twitching, even through the wall. She wants to hiss _be calm, be calm_ , but that is not a lesson Sarah would learn from her. Helena sinks deep into the part of her mind that is a sniper’s patience, that is waiting for hours behind a gun, that does not listen when women with her face say _please_. Everything becomes very sharp and very calm. Everything becomes easy. Sarah is nothing more than a way of telling whether or not the cameras are pointed Helena’s way – Sarah is no longer Helena’s sister, Sarah is nothing but a tool to be used.

_Go_ , Sarah says. Helena threads the metal through the bars and starts banging away. The metal is all she can see; it blooms to fill all of her vision.

_Hide_ , Sarah says. Helena does. All she can see is floor.

_Go_ , Sarah says. Helena does. And just like that: _snap!_ Like a neck: _snap!_ Helena thinks _praise God_ , out of habit, but anything she might feel about that sinks to the bottom of her well-self, pools there like water. No time. She doesn’t have to feel anything, not if she doesn’t want to. She starts pulling herself through the window.

The metal scrapes open her back, like wings screaming. She doesn’t have to feel that either.

Through.

_Through_.

She lands with a thud on the piles of clothing, hard enough to almost jolt herself back into herself. But she doesn’t have time, doesn’t have time, so she shoves it back down and goes back to work. In the cell next to her Sarah is hissing things that she probably thinks are a help, are a comfort. They filter through Helena’s brain and become silence. She’s busy: she’s busy running across the room, pulling herself to the camera. (Unlike Sarah, Helena is good at _actually_ climbing walls.) The camera goes out with a fizzle. Its one red eye blinks out. She ducks behind crates, begins to fasten her shirt. Hurry hurry hurry, ticks the back of Helena’s brain. _Hurry hurry hurry_ , says Sarah. Helena can hear the heavy footsteps of a man entering the room. Her eyes fall on a jagged piece of metal, sticking out of the wall.

_I don’t want to kill him_ , she thinks. _I am so tired_.

_He means nothing,_ her brain thinks back. _He isn’t anything but an obstacle. Get rid of him. Sinner. Nothing. Means nothing._

She runs around and around the room in circles. In her brain, she runs around and around in circles.

In the end, there isn’t a choice.

The metal stabs right through his brain and he dies bleeding. Helena shoves herself all the way down, tells herself that she is a well and hides herself down at the very bottom. All she is is cold water. That is all she is. That is all.

She spits on his body, because good riddance because she is cold water because she does not feel guilty, not even a little bit. Good riddance he is dead good riddance she does not care at all. Spit. Water. Cold. Good riddance.

She can hear Sarah’s short fast breaths in the cell. Sarah is afraid enough for the both of them. Sarah, Helena tells herself, put Helena here. Sarah does not care about Helena at all. Helena lies to herself until she is strong enough to walk up to the bars, look at Sarah on the other side of them. This must be how Sarah felt over and over again, each time she left Helena behind to rot.

_She means nothing,_ says Helena’s brain. _She’d only slow you down._

Helena kept herself locked up to let someone go free before. Now look at her. Now look at them both, on opposite sides of the bars. She makes her slow way to the door, watches Sarah try her best to order Helena around. Poor, poor Sarah. She does not understand that Helena does not belong to her anymore.

“Now we are even, _sestra_ ,” Helena says.

She watches realization grow in Sarah’s eyes, does not look away. It is all she can give Sarah, the weight of her gaze. _I know. I see you._ But this time she does not lie. There is no reason, anymore, to tell Sarah that it will be alright.

She turns her back, listens to Sarah try every combination of words that she can think of. Part of Helena wants to turn back around, say: _tell me again that you love me, Sarah. Tell me that I am your sister, that you need me_.

It wouldn’t change anything. But she would like to hear Sarah say it.

Maybe Sarah understands that this would not work, though, because instead she tells Helena that _Helena_ needs _Sarah_. This is ridiculous. Once Helena used the bone to get herself out, she threw it away. That is what you do, with the tools that you have made.

She turns back one more time. Maybe she will say goodbye.

When she meets Sarah’s eyes, she decides: no, no. There is nothing left for Helena to say.

So she runs. She runs into the cold night of the desert, into the dark and away from the light. Through the veins of this desert-body, past soldier boys and soldier men, until she can see the wall rising overhead. She grabs water (it is not heavy enough) (there is not enough water) ( _shh_ , there has to be enough water, there has to), keeps running. Leaps and jumps and climbs and runs, all the way to the top of the wall.

And there, she is frozen.

_What are you doing?_ hisses a voice. _Go, stupid_.

 Helena looks: there is Pupok, like the scorpion has been there the whole time.

“My _sestra_ ,” Helena says back, helplessly. “She tears my heart.”

Here, on the borderline between a cage and its lack, between freedom and the same boxes she has always lived in – she is frozen. She is losing the cold that she had clung onto so desperately. All of her feeling is surging back up, tunneling towards her heart to rip it in two.

_Your sister’s_ dead _. Think of the baby inside of you._

God help her, Helena does. Thinks of a baby forced to grow up in a cage. Thinks of Sarah, down there, inside that cage. Thinks of the blessing that Sarah did not know she was giving her: _always, always put your child first_.

_Run!_ Pupok says. _Run while you still can._

Sirens blare, a constant scream. Helena shuts her eyes tight for a second, and runs.

* * *

She runs for a long time. She runs until the water bottle is lighter than it should be, lighter than it ever was; she runs until the sun rises, and runs as it keeps rising and rising. She runs as her skin burns. She runs like she is running into a fire, instead of away from one. She runs until all she can hear is Sarah screaming, _Helena please Helena please Helena please Helena please_. Or maybe it’s her heartbeat. She can’t tell.

In the back of her mind, growing and growing, is this thought: this was not a good plan. The desert will eat her alive like a hungry mouth, and for what? Sarah is in a cage, and Helena’s baby is locked tight inside her belly. And she will _die here_.

With that thought, she falls.

Maybe she will just lie right here and sleep. Dream dreams of dark places, and cold water.

_Helena_ , sighs an insistent voice. _Did you hear the one about the pregnant girl who fell down in the desert?_

Helena thinks: why do you care so much about my baby?

Helena thinks: do not call me _girl_.

Helena says: “Leave me be.” For the first time in a long time, she means it. She is sick of Pupok’s riddles and games; she is sick of the way Pupok is always fine, just fine, and just keeps hissing and prodding and playing games with Helena. Sick. Of. It.

_The only reason you’re alive is because of me_ , Pupok hisses, like Helena spoke out loud. Which she _didn’t_.

_Get up_.

Stop telling me what to _do_ , Helena thinks. Her eyes are sand-blinded, but she can see it: Pupok acts like her friend, but the scorpion is just another angry voice yelling orders. Just another friend of Helena’s who wants Helena to be a weapon.

Well, she is sick of being someone else’s weapon.

“I have no strength,” she says, like a liar. She is thinking. That is why she is here, on the ground.

_It’s not exhaustion that stops you,_ Pupok says smugly. _You regret leaving Sarah behind._ Don’t _you._

Stop telling me what to do. Stop telling me what to do. Stop telling me what you think I am thinking, stop putting the words in my mouth.

…there are better things, maybe, for Helena’s mouth to be filled with.

She is very, very hungry.

“I regret nothing,” she says.

_Why are you lying here, then? Because your sister is more important than your baby?_ Pupok asks, loud and shrill and angry. Pupok is a stupid bug. Pupok has been a stupid bug this _whole time_ , Helena thinks.

“ _No_ ,” Helena says. Quicker than a bug she has reached out and grabbed Pupok by the stinger. No more stinger for Pupok. No more weapon for Pupok.

“Because I’m _hungry_ ,” she whispers, and she eats the nasty bug alive.

* * *

After she’s chewed and swallowed she lies there, for a minute, in the hot sand. She wonders if she should mourn. She had joked about taking Sarah into the desert and eating her, but the truth is Helena never planned that – and yet here she is, eating her only friend alive.

(Was Pupok her friend?

That is too complicated a question to think about right now.)

Her mouth tastes bitter; she wants to spit into the sand next to her head but she cannot waste water. Instead she lies there on her back, puts Pupok in a box (it seems fitting) and shoves that box to the back of her head. Next to the big bulging boxes of Danielle-and-Janika-and-Aryanna-and-

(How many people has _she_ killed?)

Later. She’ll think about it later. For now she has to plan. There is no Sarah here to scream, no Pupok here to hiss. Which means the question Helena has to think about is: what is it that _Helena_ wants?

Well, she thinks, she cannot lie here in the desert forever. She could keep running, but: she does not know where she is going, and eventually she will fall down.

She shifts up to a sitting position, sighs and smears her hands down her face to wipe away the sand. She is being stupid. She can think about it log-i-ca-lly, but the truth is this: she wants to go back for Sarah. Pupok was an irritating bug, but Pupok was right. She is running, but Sarah is rattling in her brain like an empty bullet. There is nowhere else for Helena to go, no one else for Helena to run to. Besides, she would have to go back anyways – she has no water left, and she _will not die here_.

She stands up, and moves back the way she came. Runs and runs. She keeps falling down, hitting the ground with a thud, but she cannot dream up more scorpions for her to eat and so she has no choice but to pick herself up again. She runs with pictures in her mind, pictures of Sarah getting shot or getting tortured or escaping on her own – Helena running right past Sarah, collapsed in the desert. There are so many ways this could go wrong. There are so many things that could have happened, after Helena was selfish and ran.

Sarah was right. With her story. It was selfish to run. But Helena was trying to _survive_ , and she thought that being the Helena who was alive Before Sarah would save her. She was close to being right. But. She should have listened more closely to Sarah’s story, probably.

She runs and thinks about that. She runs and falls and runs again. She runs until the day turns cooler, darker. She runs until the camp looms up in front of her like a big hungry mouth.

“I regret nothing,” she whispers to herself, trying to be brave. She doesn’t regret coming back. They won’t catch her. She is brave. She is strong. She is looking for a way in.

Before she can find one, the world goes _boom_. Helena blinks; her first thought is _Sarah_ , like Sarah knew Helena was coming back and sent Helena a sign. Like God has finally decided to look out for Helena again.

Well, maybe He has. The boom – whatever it was – has knocked open a plate in the ground, shiny metal. Helena opens it curiously and finds a tunnel, cool and dark. Praise – someone, Helena supposes. She sends a silent thanks to whoever has made the world explode. She wishes them peace, and slides into the tunnel. Hits the ground.

Sees: Sarah.

She’s lying on the ground like she’s been dropped by the hand of God, like a gift just for Helena. Helena makes her way from the tunnel to Sarah, eyes her. She does not really look more damaged since the last time Helena saw her. This is probably good. Helena’s heart kicks once, twice in her chest, like the baby in her belly that will someday grow little feet and learn to dance. (Not run, though. That is Helena’s hope.) She looks at Sarah, the way Sarah breathes. It is good to be back. It is good, she thinks, to see Sarah again. Helena had missed her.

She leans over Sarah’s body, watches the flutter of her eyelashes. The air smells like dirt and dust and sweat; it smells like home.

“You came back,” Sarah whispers, her eyes on Helena’s solid and dark. _I know. I see you. It will be alright._

“Come, _sestra_ ,” Helena says. “People miss us.”

Helena takes her sister’s hand, and pulls her into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> I carry in my chest  
> A pound of flesh  
> Could never tip the scale that I’ve made  
> I should have stayed  
> But I was never wise
> 
> I hear your voices in the wind that cuts the night  
> And I pray to whatever is listening things’ll be all right  
> \--"A Pound of Flesh," Radical Face


End file.
